Incremental Steps<em>A reminder to myself to just keep putting one foot in front of the other… and also to occasionally turn around, admire the view and look how far I’ve come.</em>
I am happy to announce that I managed to finish the build phase of Castle Araluen just before the Winter Solstice. It felt like a pretty big milestone and the timing of it worked out really nicely because it meant I had the opportunity to celebrate it over the winter holidays and reflect on how far I’ve come. Which is a long way, I’ve learned a lot about myself and about being a digital artist. Completing the castle was the first bit of evidence I could give myself that I can build the worlds that live in my imagination. Which was pretty smile inducing.
Castle Araluen build phase = complete!
Return of the ISG
If you’ve had read my previous journal post you will know that my plan was to move on to creating the landscape of the Vale come the new year (see Journal Post 10 for details). I was excited to start this next phase of the project and also buoyed by the confidence boost I’d got from completing the castle. But as I sat at my desk in early January my imposter syndrome gremlin (ISG) decided to rear its extremely ugly head…the castle, while a long way outside of my wheelhouse, was a ‘technical build’ and therefore had some parallels with my previous CAD experience. The landscape on the other hand is a completely different story, being an organic build and on a scale I have literally no experience with.
My ISG latched onto this, flipping the narrative from “well I figured out how to build a castle, so I can figure out how to build a landscape” to a full blown self doubt spiral.
So I procrastinated getting started by instead focusing on ticking things off my huge to-do list of business and life tasks instead. While not a waste of time, it meant that progress stalled on the Vale of Araluen for a while.
That said (written?!) I did make some pretty big breakthroughs on the business side of Ayane Studios during this time. I finally figured out what do with several key parts of our business plan that I’d been trying to define for a long time. So that was nice and most definitely progress. I then got lost down a bit of rabbit hole of coding trying to enact said figurings out. (Sorry to be cryptic, I will write about what I’ve been up to behind the scenes soon). Somehow January came and went as did the early part of February…
Hidden features and a lot of research
Something shifted three weeks ago, I honestly can’t tell you exactly what caused it - I have an inkling, but more on that later. Since then I’ve been able to make huge progress and had some pretty major breakthroughs with the landscape and also the art style I want to try and evolve.
When I got strict with myself I realised that my biggest issue with starting the landscape was that I just didn’t know where to start. This was something that was actually really easy to fix.
So I scoured YouTube and the internet in search of tutorials and advice on creating landscapes in Blender and found some really helpful things. For example I had no idea that Blender has a landscape add-on [A.N.T.Landscape] or a tree generator [Sapling] built into it until this round of research.
As I so often find it’s a case of figuring out what terms you need to search for then refining the criteria until I get close enough to what I’m trying to figure out how to do. Amusingly I managed to find solutions to some of my other landscape questions along the way when I was least expecting to.
Hand drawn tree branches on Sapling created Fir tree
This got me thinking about how eventually incremental steps add up to big progress. It also reminded me about a video I watched a couple of years ago in which a composer was doing a ‘tips for being a successful film score composer’. In it he said one of the biggest factors for success for many creative people is just not giving up, because this is what allows you to keep learning and evolving. There have been many times during the creation of the Vale of Araluen where I thought I couldn’t complete it and that maybe I should just admit defeat thanks to my ISG and also not knowing where to start with certain aspects. But after having an “artist strop” and letting the dust settle for a bit I have always found that the idea of giving up is just not an option. I can’t give up on the dream I’ve held tight to for so many years - it would mean giving up on myself.
So what are these landscape breakthroughs? Well I figured out how to create the valley, the lake, the mountains, a couple of rivers and several species of trees.
Rivers, lakes and the start of a forest
If you’re looking to create a landscape but are as stuck as I was I can recommend this tutorial. It really helped me get started. A.N.T.Landscape is a great tool that allows artists to experiment with different layouts really quickly. I tried lots of different river paths, mountain profiles and lake shapes before settling on this configuration. I’ve got several future story ideas in mind that need certain habitats in particular locations so along with photo references these have informed my choices for the layout of The Vale of Araluen.
Beginnings of the Visken Forest
I also learned how to create trees using the Sapling tree generator using this tutorial. Having done that I began customising them by figuring out how to create my own hand drawn leaves and branches and use them instead of photos. I’ve been trying to work out how to create and use hand drawn textures for a while because as I’ve mentioned before I’m not aiming for photorealism with my work. I want to try and develop a soft artistic style inspired by ‘How To Train Your Dragon 3’ and my trees have got me a step closer to this, which feels like a major milestone!
Figuring out how to use my own artwork in this way has opened a new door of possibilities which I’m really excited about. I’m also happy because it means I get to do more hand drawing which is a part of the process I really enjoy.
This is one of those big progress moments that has needed a lot of incremental steps to achieve and it may well have got a little dance around the studio victory dance.
View over the Visken forest and the lake
You’ll notice in these landscape images that there are a fair amount untrimmed surfaces at the moment (around the lake edge, where the mountains run into the lake etc) - I’ve got a lot of blending and ‘sewing’ together left to do!
The way I’ve built it up is by focusing on getting the views around the castle to be where I want them to be, quite literally mapping out the landscape. Much of the landscape is inspired by places we’ve been so I’ve been pulling my references from our library of holiday photos. My three main references so far are Loch Lomond and Loch Katrine in Scotland as well as Achensee in Austria.
I haven’t done much texture work yet which is why it sort of looks like it has snowed everywhere but around the castle. The landscape is very much a work in progress still but something I’ve learned is that progress and milestones need to be celebrated. I’m really liking how it is looking at the moment.
The Seren mountains are beginning to take shape behind Castle Araluen
The Shift
So what do I think caused the shift I mentioned earlier? Two things, I decided to focus on my health and I not only made a decision about the breed of my next woofle, but I have also actively started the search for him. I know deep in my heart that I’m now ready to try and earn the love of another dog.
I haven’t really ever been that good at looking after myself hence why I had a full blown burnout at the age of 35. While I’m not one for New Year’s resolutions I realised during the winter holidays that I needed to overhaul my daily routine. I won’t bore you with the details, but I could feel that my neglect was really starting to impact me, I was tired to the point of exhaustion, everything hurt and it was affecting my work… not good.
Working for yourself is a huge privilege but it’s very easy to develop bad habits without the structure of an office job. I had got into the really bad habit of letting my day drift later and later meaning that I wasn’t going to bed until 2am or later most nights. This meant it felt like I had jet lag constantly and it messed with mealtimes. In addition to this, in my previous life I was used to having to spend 11+ hours a day at my desk which meant I felt guilty if I didn’t do this with my own work despite the fact that I know long hours are an anathema for creativity.
I’ve purposely not posted for a bit while I’ve been doing some experimenting. I guess it’s the engineer in me coming out - finishing my testing phase before reporting on my findings… I know everyone is different but in case it’s useful to you dear reader, here is what I’ve found works for me;
First I gave myself a reason to do it: To live well - I then got really specific about what that means for both Graham and I. The next step was to break down where we are now versus where we want to be and then figure out what needs to change. There is a Marie Kondo quote that I really like;
““The space in which we live should be for the person we are becoming now, not for the person we were in the past” ”
I have followed this principle with our stuff and home and found it very helpful so I decided to apply it to my daily routine to help create the life I want to be living. A way of living that allows both of us to prioritise our health, enables us to make time for a “fruit-loop” of a dog, to go on adventures and gives us time to work together to make Ayane Studios successful. To achieve this requires a framework of lots of little supporting changes and it is certainly not something that happens overnight, it’s more of a long term goal but we’re setting ourselves on the right track to give ourselves the best chance of being able to get to where we want to. What follows is a list of the things we’ve done so far;
1) I decided on a wake up time, set an alarm and maaaaade myself get up when it goes off. To help me with this I’ve put the alarm across the room so I have to get out of bed to silence it. To say that I am by no means an early bird would be an enormous understatement, I’m notorious for being horrendous at getting up at a sensible time.
Same goes for bedtime I have set a time and an alarm and made it non negotiable. Since I was a teenager I’ve put work ahead of sleep, but I’m not doing it anymore. Sleep is so important to overall health and I need to be in good health to be who I want to be. (There’s my reason in action…)
2) I began round eight of decluttering our home - I’ve been a minimalist for the last eight years (a minimalist who loves jewel tones and colour don’t worry our home isn’t a white box!)… The more I declutter the lighter both Graham and I feel. I think we’ve probably got rid of about 70% of what we owned before we started decluttering (we’ve either sold or donated anything of use and tried to recycle as much as possible!) but we still felt like we had too much ‘stuff’. So we’re going another level in and it feels amazing. The mundane daily tasks are so much easier and we both actually want to and enjoy cooking now that our our home is so dramatically streamlined.
3) I now work in two to three hour stints, then I go and do something else for an hour. I’m not super rigid with this, if I’m near finishing something I’ll finish it and then take a slightly longer break. At the moment I knit, read a book, watch a YouTube video do some chores etc in my breaks, but when we have a furry one again, this time will be for walks, training and woofle fun.
4) I have made breakfast and lunch something I look forward to so I don’t skip them. I’m really bad at skipping meals, always have been.
I now make what I refer to as ‘pink porridge’ basically porridge with thawed frozen berries added to it as I make it (the berry juice turns the porridge pink, hence the highly creative name!) for breakfast. For lunch I make myself a delicious sandwich in homemade spelt and malthouse buns. Not only is this making me feel better because I’m not running on fumes, I enjoy eating these delicious meals.
Pink Porridge (blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, oats and almond milk) + rooibos tea
5) I make sure I have a full cup of tea while I’m on each of my breaks - I’m notorious for only drinking half a cup or forgetting about it all together even if it’s right in front of me while I’m working. I know I wasn’t drinking enough so now I try and aim to drink four large mugs of tea (Rooibos! I wouldn’t sleep for a week if I drank this amount of caffeinated tea!) during my work day.
6) I built exercise into my morning routine, I do about half an hour of ballet barre exercises followed by 20 minutes of yoga to stretch it all out.
7) I have put limits of when and where I’m allowed to watch YouTube videos (other than tutorials!). So I’ve made a habit of going to the living room to watch non work related videos on our TV. This stops me from doomscrolling at my desk and losing hours of my day.
All of these require a certain amount of discipline to maintain - but this is where having my reason (point 1) is so helpful. After all, to be successful at anything requires discipline - just ask any dancer or sportsperson. It is easier to make good decisions when you know what your criteria are… “does doing this aid or hinder me from being the person I want to be?” In most cases it helps to distill decisions down to a simple ‘yes or no’ answer. W for simplicity and minimalism.
Next….
The next step is to ‘plant the forest’ in the Vale. I’ve been doing a bit of research into how to do this in the most efficient way for processing power without hurting the aesthetics. I don’t think I’m going to use geometry nodes for this as I want to have control over where the trees are going. It will take longer but I’ll have the control I want, because yes I am a control freak.
Then after that I plan to move onto the banks of the rivers and the lake. With Spring just around the corner (Wooooohoooooo! - It feels like it’s been such a long winter this time around the sun) I’m going to go off in search of inspiration for these areas. The light has been so amazing this week, courtesy of the beautiful and very welcome sunshine and I’ve been itching to get my camera and my wee travel art kit out in the field.
Thank you for reading, with love,
